cudacuf
Retired Stripper Banger
This is all strictly opinion. I'm no expert or anything, but here is what I usually do.
1. Download and use 3 or 4 trial edditions of antivirus software.
2. Backup my stuff.
3. Go into BIOS and remove IRQ ports that I don't use (i.e. printer, COM). Everything is either enable or disable. No auto detect. Disable components that don't have its own RAM or processor. A better graphics card might be a waste of time. I think EQ and EQ2 are both CPU rendered. But if it's an onboard graphics card, diable it right now. Anything is better.
4. You need about 8 gigs for your C drive, you can do more and get away with it but I'm doing just fine with 8. Remember, the more you put into C the more seek time you get. Closer to the top of the HDD the faster the access time, C drive is always closest to the top of that primary hdd. If you chop it up some, like get rid of useless drivers and stuff that would be great. If you don't chop it up, you might wanna add more memory to c drive. I put the paging file on the C drive as well. Install your graphics card and sound card stuff in C drive. Everything else should go to d drive. EQ goes on a different hdd all together. I wanna say I-RAM but I'm broke so I wont bother with that, but if you do have money go for I-RAM raid 0. More I-RAM you got the better. Check this out.
I-RAM
5. Toss out your Vista disc, it's no good for eq or eq2. XP64 only if you have over 4 gigs of RAM.
6. Tuneup 2009 is great. Especially if you removed valuable windows components. It will clean up the mistakes made in the registry for ya. This is the primary reason why you loose performance with a chopped up OS. I also love the fact that you can make your registry smaller with it. And those useless backup files on the c drive are a real pest, this gets rid of them easy.
7. I never got around to trying this but there is a 1.73 MB Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package. I think that compiles your macroquest2 without the system resource sucker of the whole program. Then again, it might not.
Concerning #5, who told you that? There are a number of happy Vista users that would argue against that. Why would you say Vista is no good for EQ?